Holy war

Self-defence. That’s the principle invoked by the Unites States to
justify attacking “terrorist training camps” in Afghanistan and a
pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. In an international system in which
states are challenging the law of the jungle, the State Department
needed a legal cover for the bombings on 20 August 1998 which
violated the sovereignty of several states. So it invoked Article 51
of the United Nations Charter. But the article only provides for the
use of “self-defence” in the case of “an armed attack... until the
Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain
international peace and security”. Did the US really defend itself
from “an armed attack” while waiting for the Security Council to take
the “necessary measures”?

It seems not. Indeed, a number of American officials have pointed
out that last month’s raids marked a turning point in Washington’s
strategy: the US no longer feels constrained to seek an international
consensus or the backing of the United Nations. As one official
remarked, “We’re in the deterrence business... [and it] is
not based on legal niceties or delay” (1). Forget international law.
Did sheriffs ever ask permission to shoot bandits?

Anyway, international law was not much help when there was no sure
proof of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the criminal attacks on the
US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But, while FBI chief Louis Freeh
was telling the world that “We are still in a fairly preliminary
stage” of the enquiry, and his most senior colleague in the field was
admitting that the main suspect arrested had neither confessed nor
implicated Mr Bin Laden (2), the Tomahawks were already on their way.
Never mind that foreign technicians who worked in the bombed Khartoum
factory dismissed the notion that it could be used to produce
chemical weapons. And the United States’unwillingness to
countenance aUN commission of enquiry said little for its
good faith.

People in the Muslim world are getting tired of this arrogance.
Some of them think President Clinton was trying to turn attention
from the Lewinsky affair; others say “a terrorist reaction to a
terrorist action is unacceptable (I)”. The most moderate think a
military response has its limitations. As an Egyptian editorial put
it, “All the Pentagon’s power may help in fighting terrorism, but it
will never be fully effective as long as discontent and [the
Islamic world’s] will to resist persist. A better approach would
be policy shifts in favour of the oppressed, such as the Palestinians
(3).”

This is reminiscent of something said by Robert M. Gates, head of
the CIA under the Bush administration: "We can pursue policies and
strategies that in the long term weaken terrorism’s roots. We can
pursue a peace in the Middle East that does not kowtow to Binyamin
Netanyahu’s obstructionism (4)."

Terrorism is drawing strength from the mounting crises and
frustrations in the Muslim world, from Iraq to Kashmir, Palestine to
Sudan. Obviously, the United States is not responsible for all the
region’s woes. But as the world’s only superpower, it is accountable
for a good number of its dramas: the embargo which is harming the
Iraqi people, sanctions against Libya and Sudan, the suffering of the
Palestinians, the continuing occupation of East Jerusalem and the
Golan, and so on. You don’t have to be a Muslim “fanatic” to question
Washington’s role in each of these events, or to see how the West
conveniently overlooks its declarations about democracy when it comes
to Saudi and Indonesian dictatorships, or authoritarian rule in Egypt
or Pakistan.

Osama bin Laden is now America’s public enemy number one. Could
the former “freedom fighter” have dreamed of a better role? Thousands
of young Muslims will now find a reason for joining his “holy war”.
But others will be reduced to silence for fear of being accused of
complicity with a power that helps perpetuate an unjust world
order.

Willy-nilly, the United States is locking itself into a “war of
civilisations” and helping to widen the fracture between the Muslim
world and the West. But the old order is on its way out. In a few
years time, the Middle East will have lost its main leaders. Yasser
Arafat and Kings Hussein and Fahd are ill, as is President Hafez al
Assad. There is a particularly dangerous transition ahead, which may
re-open the whole question of the borders and states that were put in
place by the old colonial powers. Like anywhere else, the peoples of
this region want peace, freedom, national independence, democracy. It
is by responding to those desires, not launching a holy war against
“Islamic terror”, that we can guarantee an orderly
transition.